Sympathetic Seeing with Esther McCoy, Schindler and the MAK

The Traveling Kitchen table of Trailer Talk at the Schindler House on N. Kings Road.

Schindler House MAK Center for Art and Architecture West Hollywood

Esther McCoy, The Story of a Person and A City

(Trailer Talk visits the MAK during the Esther McCoy show)

Esther McCoy’s life from 1904 to 1989 spans the 20th century, but it was in 1945 that she began her relationship with architecture in Los Angeles when she became the draft person for architect, R.M. Schindler at his Schindler House. The house itself is significant for the social experiment it embodied, as a structure that was communally based and designed for two families to live in. Its open floor plan and shared kitchen reflected a social ideal of equality between men and women, and challenged notions of private property and the way our private domestic lives impact our public ones. The innovative room arrangements make us ask how we participate in our communities as we flow from inside to outside life and from a myopic nuclear family reality to a more inclusive expansive one.